Sorry about the long delay; it’s been a really busy few weeks and I was stuck in the hospital again for another obstruction, which I’ll post about in a couple of days.  New hospital, better experience, in short.  Anyhow, finally getting around to loading the post I wrote a week ago.  —

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but I figured it was time for an update on IF, as I had indicated I would be trying to do periodically. Just after that last post I was in to visit my chiropractor, and was telling him about my experiment and my hopes that it would reduce my inflammation. He cautioned me on continuing with the fasting as I had been doing (fasting for 16 hours each day and eating my meals within an 8 hour window) because for women in particular, it can cause hormonal and metabolism issues. We discussed what I was trying to get out of it, and I told him a few things I had observed during the week I had been practicing IF. I told him I was surprised to see that first thing in the morning (normally around 7am), I really was just fine with some green tea, and didn’t get truly hungry until later in the morning. I also found that my morning circuit training workouts felt a little easier without anything in my stomach. We decided together that eating my breakfast around 10am at work would both keep the benefits I had described to him and satisfy my body’s hormonal balance.

Something he did tell me, which I hadn’t heard before, is that something that can also contribute to inflammation in the body is excess food in the stomach, which can only process about one cup (roughly the size of your fist) of food every few hours. Any excess beyond that can exacerbate inflammation levels, so his suggestion was to eat a small meal every couple of hours. I will admit that this has been my natural inclination since all of my surgeries, as I can’t really digest a lot of food at a time. I decided to incorporate this into my daily eating window, which I use as a mere guideline – there are no hard and fast rules, I’m really just trying to pay attention to what my body wants and the reaction my habits are having on my symptoms and behaviors.

So now that all that explanation is out of the way, my basic routine is going a little something like this:

• Green tea with lemon upon waking, along with a few glasses of water
• Breakfast around 10am; typically greek yogurt (2%) with a little honey, some berries and a few chopped nuts
• Small lunch around 1-2pm; normally a small salad with some veggies and/or fruit on it with a small piece of cheese
• Snack around 4pm; normally a Kind bar (I like most of their flavors, just can’t have anything with coconut in it)
• Dinner around 7pm; normally meat (I rotate between chicken, pork, steak, etc) and a salad of some sort as a side.

So really, I guess you could say I’m still technically doing my IF routine, it’s just that my fasting window is only about 14 hours now and I’m eating in a 10 hour window. Feeling pretty good with that; I will say that I notice less cravings in the late afternoon hours now and as I mentioned before, I like doing my morning circuit training without food in my stomach. My bathroom trips in the morning have been reduced, which makes sense since I’m not eating until later, but other than that, I haven’t noticed any other major changes.

I should mention that I did start taking a vitamin D3 supplement last week, as my levels were pretty low according to my last blood test, and I’m thinking of starting a B-Complex supplement as well, since I’ve felt a little more tired than usual lately and am not quite due for another Feraheme (iron) infusion yet. I’ll update again in another week or two on the symptom progress; I’m also still waiting to be contacted by a case manager from Cigna to start addressing (and disputing) some of the medical charges from the last few months now that the latest set of hospital bills has started rolling in. So far, the tally is about five grand, but hey – who’s counting?!?! It’s times like this I want to move to Canada. Anyhow, once I start that process, I’ll write about that, since I know many of you likely face similar challenges. And finally, be prepared that there will be one lengthy and extremely detailed post entirely devoted to food, as for my birthday, the Mr. and I are heading on a road trip to New Orleans for a few days, a trip which I’m not ashamed to admit is devoted almost entirely to the search of the best Creole food. I’d better start doubling up on the Protonix now…